Learn How to Make Signs the Greg Swann / BloodHound Way

Related posts:

1. Feedburner Testing Real Estate Blogging Groups
2. FREE Real Estate RSS Icons!
3. Google Inches Towards Real Estate Search

Previous Coverage: It all started here.

Another stunning story comes from 4Realz.net with news that weeks ago, following in Zillow’s footsteps, Realtor.com launched a new home estimates feature. Again, nobody noticed and nobody cared. Perhaps this is why Realtor.com thinks they can behave in the manner they have and  get away with it. The fact is that if nobody notices what you do or don’t do and you are a company with the reach and funding of Realtor.com / NAR, that should be a warning that you are not doing things right, not something to be used as a shield to hide behind.

Related posts:

1. Realtor.com Blog Hacked Day 3: Down for 17 Hours and Counting
2. Realtor.com Blog Hacked Day 2: Google Delisting on the Horizon
3. Realtor.com Hacked Day 8: It’s Not Going Away

At around 7 PM last night the Realtor.com Blog was taken offline. 17 hours later and counting, they are still down. The speculation is that a wordpress plugin was at fault, but that remains to be seen.

We are still scratching our heads over how nobody at Realtor.com noticed the hack in their RSS readers, why no action was taken when we notified them of the hack for over 36 hours and why securing the website and servers is taking 17 hours and counting.

Realtor.com is not a mom and pop shop, they take in millions from hard working Realtors and should be held to a higher standard. Have you ever seen Trulia, Zillow, Redfin or HomeGain down for 17 hours? Of course not.

Realtor.com has yet to release comment or respond to our request for comment.

Update: As of 2:30 PM, the site is back up minus the specific posts that had injected spam for a total downtime of around 19 hours. Wow. Still waiting for an official response from a Realtor.com spokesperson. My hope is that they do not fail to address the issue and communicate with the Realtor.com community and bloggers that use their service. Failure to make users aware of the circumstances involved with the hack (considering its anyone’s guess whether personal data was compromised) would be unfortunate for the Realtor.com blogging community.

Since the Realtor.com blog is actually located on a sub-domain at talk.realtor.com, my suspicion is that this could also lead to adverse effects or de-listing by Google of the primary domain of Realtor.com. I pinged Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com and Rand Fishkin of SEOMOZ.org and they concurred that issues with the sub-domain could indirectly affect the primary domain of Realtor.com

I also just noticed they DO have a contact page link if you look hard enough that I didn’t see yesterday before I emailed one of their bloggers yesterday…. let’s see if a quick email changes the situation.

The Real Question. Am I the ONLY person that gets the Realtor.com Blog FEED? Does not one employee of the NAR / Realtor.com team read their own blog / feed? I’m just saying…….

Sample of Spam Links Injected into Code (Click image below for full view)

Follow Up: Realtor.com Hacked Day 3

Related posts:

1. Realtor.com Blog Hacked Day 3: Down for 17 Hours and Counting
2. Realtor.com Hacked Day 7: Nobody Notices or Cares
3. Realtor.com Hacked Day 8: It’s Not Going Away

(Click on image for full length image)

Original post:

Related posts:

1. Realtor.com Blog Hacked Day 2: Google Delisting on the Horizon
2. Realtor.com Blog Hacked Day 3: Down for 17 Hours and Counting
3. Realtor.com Hacked Day 5: Communication Breakdown

Off To a Bad Start. iHype.com  is slated to launch tomorrow. We think. The problem is that while tomorrow, June 2nd, is shown on the Ihype.com home page (less then 24 hours from now), the countdown ticker indicates that we have a full 1 day, 16 hours and 34 minutes to go from today, June 1st at 5:43 PM. This would indicate a launch of Tuesday, June 3rd, somewhere around 9 am, not June 2nd.

Execution. Since iHype is a paid blog post platform, it would make sense that they eat their own dog food by implementing paid posts as part of their marketing and launch campaign. There is only one problem with the paid posts implemented by iHype to raise awareness about their company, the bloggers they have paid are are promoting Hype.com NOT iHype.com! That’s right, this post, this post and this post are paid posts where the paid reviewers are reviewing the “Ihype.com” launch on June 2nd, but actually discuss the energy drink called “Hype” that is found at hype.com, ouch.

iHype Paid Post Promoting Wrong Product: an Energy Drink.

The Claim:

“iHype employs thousands of online publishers, bloggers and content generators worldwide” – iHype.com website

Reality. The iHype system does not contain a single real paid post opportunity. In fact many of the links do not even work, so it isn’t possible for publishers to navigate the system without receiving errors. (click image below to view full page of sample opportunities)

Overpromising, Underdelivering. One area where consistency can be found. If the test jobs above that pay $5 per job are representative of what iHype expects average payouts to be, bloggers will only need to write 2000 blog posts per month or 91 posts per day working a 5 day work week to earn $10,000.

Support. Having the correct phone number so that you can support your users is overrated.

When we wrote about ePerks, we noted that while the ePerks registrar information was inputted using a false name and address, Ihype.com’s contact information was actually correct. Shortly after our post, Ihype updated their registrar details.

Before BrokerScience Ihype Coverage Two Days Ago.

After. Ben as decided he no longer wants his name, phone number, address, or email address to be public information.

Shared Hosting. Shared hosting is when a consumer or amateur webmaster purchases hosting on a server that is shared with others for a much lower price (they can start as low at $3 per month) than if they paid for a dedicated server. Since most websites receive very little traffic and need very little in the way of resources, a dedicated server is overkill. On the other hand, commercial ventures that receive significant traffic necessitate a dedicated server(s). The screenshot below shows that there are thousands of other sites sharing this server / IP address with iHype.com, indicative that is is on shared server. This means that it will take very little traffic to take their site down and the question isn’t if, but when they will put their site on a dedicated server. In order to have a successful launch with no downtime, switching the website to a dedicated server would ordinarily already be done and would almost NEVER be a task delegated to be done with less then 24 hours to launch. While it makes no sense, it speaks volumes about where iHype.com is at in terms of organization.

Other Thoughts. iHype.com might consider fixing their layout. We are going to hold off on criticism of the large amount of bad links and database errors one will encounter while navigating the iHype publisher system until they have had time to properly launch. That being said, based on the execution of ePerks and everything we have seen so far, this is not going to be pretty. My prediction is that any PayPerPost.com or similar platform users that are so bold to even consider trying iHype will quickly abandon it when they get a taste of the Ben Behrouzi school of customer service and product execution.

UPDATE JUNE 2ND, 2008

Mission Aborted, Failure to Launch. The countdown launch timer page was briefly replaced last night with a website following the format found at beta.ihype.com and then taken down again. This morning the countdown timer was deleted and as of 12:30 Pacific, there has been no launch. There have been no messages regarding a delay or possible launch date from company representatives and the 800 number still goes to a cell phone sounding voicemail that does not mention iHype.com. Updates will be provided if and when iHype.com launches.

Related posts:

1. Ben Behrouzi / ePerks.com: A Case Study in Self Induced Search Engine Brand Destruction
2. ePerks: A Case Study in Greed and Self-Imposed Brand Destruction
3. ePerks Abandoned & Hacked, A Glimpse into LeapFish’s Future

ePerks.com launched in 2007 to connect consumers with professionals in the real estate, automotive and home improvement verticals, with an emphasis on real estate. Real estate agents pay territory based subscription fees and share commissions with ePerks on completed sales. ePerks was Founded by Behnam (Ben) Behrouzi, 27, who also co-founded reply.com with his uncle, Payam Zamani (founder of autoweb.com) and one John Truchard. The three Reply.com founders also founded Imotors.com (Ben’s profile subsequently removed from iMotors.com). Ben also owns Echostar Financial (update: they have gone out of business), a mortgage company, Brabus Real Estate (update: link removed, out of business), and Brabus Ventures (update: links removed, out of business).

Marketing the ePerks Way

Paid Review Posts. ePerks launched by engaging in pay per post marketing (where blogs are paid to write a review of the company). Pay per post marketing is controversial because of the ethical dilemna it presents to marketers because it is inherently deceptive in nature, lacks transparency (many blogs do not disclose or poorly disclose that they have been paid to write a review) and reviews are by and large positively biased. Consumers can usually spot a fake endorsement a mile away and this means that the goal of raising awareness of a brand has been successful via these paid posts, but in reverse. Consumers are now aware of your brand, product and or service, but have been made so through a medium that inherently builds mistrust and skepticism about your company. Many still, would argue that pay per post campaigns have little reach and influence even when properly executed.

Seeding Positive Comments in Paid Posts, Forums and Blogs. ePerks then took the step of starting fake forum posts like this one by “RKS6″ which are easily identifiable when they are created by users that create a new account on a forum and only make one or two posts regarding the company they are spamming for. Then they seeded their paid posts with false praise of ePerks and started seeding other forum discussion threads (another example of “RKS6″ inquiring about ePerks similar to many inquiries by “RKS6″ on various forums and blogs). Many of the seeded comments are little more then thinly shield corporate talking points and never include links or contact information that can be verified. We were able to find two commenters with positive ePerks feedback that did have verifiable contact information but both declined to comment for this story and both said they longer worked ePerks due to ePerks performance issues.

The screenshot above is from perhaps the most humorous example of ePerk’s use of seeded forum comments where there are dozens of fake ePerks comments. This forum automatically assigns a city to each comment based on IP address, making it simple to see which comments are fake. In this example all one has to do is note which posts are from Brentwood, CA to spot the fake ePerks comments. This isn’t always reliable though because ePerks likely pays people to seed fake comments from different states and IP addresses but in this case a good number are obviously fake, especially those purporting to be satisfied ePerks users that are in Washington, for example, even though their IP address has outed them as being in Brentwood as occurs with dozens of other fake ePerks testimonials.

This entire blog (update: link removed as blog has been password portected), started by “Michael K” is dedicated to getting ePerks “feedback” so that the “Michael K” can make a decision as to whether or not he is going to join ePerks. Not surprisingly, there is nothing but glowing praise about ePerks in the comments.

Again, consumers can spot comment spam very quickly and there are fewer things more despised online more then spam in the form of fake forum posts or fake comments in blog posts or forum theads. Ultimately, the paid blog posts and fake forum posts have served as a launching pad for ePerks users to vent and complain about their bad ePerks experiences.

Spam. Legitimate companies and smart brands do not spam for obvious reasons. Many have complained about ePerks spam and I too have received it. Spamming is one of the single best ways to build distrust and resentment towards your brand.

Poor Marketing Decisions. Commercials like this are not only offensive to your intended client base of real estate agents but some might argue are unnecessarily lacking the taste and sensibility necessary to engage the public in a meaningful way.

ePerks Performance

Execution. Performance is marketing through execution and based on online user complaints about ePerk’s performance, they seem to be failing to achieve user satisfaction on a large scale. Complaints include claims of being misled about how ePerks works and the results that can be expected, failure to honor an in place refund policy, charging credit cards after accounts were canceled, difficulty in canceling services, lack of communication (especially once a complaint was lodged), failing to produce results and misrepresentations about promotions such as a super bowl commercial to generate traffic to the site, among others. Virtually any forum thread or blog post you can find about ePerks is bound to include user negative feedback with consistent complaints about ePerks performance across the board.

The Tale of the Tape. The ePerks model enables ePerks users to pay for the right to receive leads for specific zip codes that are generated on ePerks.com. In exchange for the monthly fees members pay ePerks, ePerks is responsible for marketing and advertising to bring traffic to the site that can then be converted to leads. ePerks, like most online lead generation companies will see an increase in the leads they generate as they increase their online ad spending and media buys. If they do not increase their traffic as they add users, the number of leads should remain constant overall, but will decrease on a per user basis as more users are added. For this reason, ideally, they should use internal data to estimate the number of page views necessary to generate their desired baseline or target number of leads per user. This would enable them to estimate how much ad spend is required on a per user basis and as they add users, can estimate the required total online ad spending / marketing budget based on users participating and adjust it as necessary. Theoretically, as the company grows, so should their traffic as they increase ad and marketing spend to achieve the traffic necessary to meet their per user lead targets.

Example Based on Generic Numbers: If ePerks determines that they want to generate 15 leads per user per month and it takes 500 page views to generate one lead, they will then know that they will need to generate around 7500 page views per user per month (500 page views x 15) to generate the necessary 15 leads per user. If they estimate it will cost $15 to generate 1000 page views then they can estimate it will cost $112.50 ($15 x 7.5 = 7500 page views) to generate 15 leads per user.

As they add users, their ad spend (assuming advertising costs don’t change) and overall site traffic should increase. If their number of users stays the same, their ad spend and traffic should go sideways to maintain the necessary lead generation required to hit user lead targets and if they decrease their user base, their ad spend and traffic should decrease. They should maintain a volume of traffic that is equivalent with generating the page views and leads necessary to satisfy their existing pool of paid users.

The chart above shows an approximate 75% reduction in traffic from March to May. If their traffic is tied to their ad spend as necessitated by the number of users participating as I demonstrated above, then there has been a clear exodus of ePerks users away from the company.

Reality. The much more likely possibility that ePerks never engaged in a marketing campaign tied to the size of their user base which would explain user complaints of receiving few or no leads. In this scenario, users would not be receiving a consistent or adequate amount of leads because of the liklihood that there was inadequate marketing / traffic to begin with and as new users were added to the pool, they only served to dilute the already inadequate available lead pool.

At the time of this writing we were unable to find any banner ads anywhere or pay per click advertising for ePerks on google using keywords they would be likely to target. Delisting by google might explain such a drop in traffic, as shown above, but at the time of this writing ePerks has around 60k pages indexed, further indicating that cessation of marketing activities is the cause.

Further Confirmation. KeywordSpy.com measures Pay-Per-Click advertising used by advertisers and indicates that ePerks stopped all advertising in February.

One early ePerks adopter we spoke with quickly ditched the program when “it became clear that their marketing strategy did not work and appeared to consist of a one tier approach of posting their one commercial on youtube.com”. In all likelihood, according to the data in the charts above, ePerks ceased whatever marketing it was engaging in at the end of January, even though it continues to collects fees from past customers and new signups. Such data fuels speculation and online chatter that a class action lawsuit is inevitable.

Sloppy on the Simplest of Tasks. The screen shot below shows the domain name registrant information for ePerks.com. They have provided a false address, false phone number, and questionable email address. Per ICANN, this is grounds for cancellation of the domain name.

Notice that Ben was able to input the correct information for the soon to be launched Ihype.com.

Engaging the Industry the ePerks / Ben Behrouzi Way

Attacking Critics. Perhaps the most egregious of all of ePerk’s indiscretions has been how it has handled its critics, online peers and customers. In perhaps the single largest real estate marketing debacle of 2008, ePerks has managed to turn one of the original pay per post bloggers it hired to write a blog review for the company, Vlad Zablotskyy of Go-Beyond-MLS.com, into one of its most vocal opponents. With ePerk’s decision to send a cease and desist letter to Vlad, ePerks instantly transformed Go-Beyond-MLS.com into a negative ePerks publicity machine and lightning rod that has created a grassroots underdog pseudo-celebrity in Vlad with the full sympathy and support of the real estate community, including heavy weight real estate bloggers like Greg Swann and even spawning ShaftingRealtors.com (update: link removed as website no longer operational)”.

Excerpts From the ePerks Cease and Desist Letter:

Your blogs create the false impression you are inviting comments from legitimate ePerks customers, when the truth is your only goal is to cast ePerks in a negative light for personal gain. In that regard, your blogs deceptively fail to inform the reader that you are motivated by an undisclosed proprietary interest in an ePerks competitor.

We have determined that our damages as a direct result of your activities are in multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. Such substantial money and brand name damages can no longer be tolerated.

You are hereby instructed to promptly do the following: (1) shutter and prevent access to all blogs with any ePerks reference or content; (2)remove any record of their existence; (3) terminate any links pointing to any blogs that reference ePerks; and (4) cease and desist from any and all current and future digital, print, Internet or verbal reference to ePerks.com or Brabus Venture Corporation. This includes closing down your January 28, 2008 blog that continues to direct readers to your previous remarks and postings. We demand that you complete these actions immediately, and in no event later than five days of this letter. Your failure to comply will result in prompt legal action, including, but not limited to, a claim of money damages and appropriate restraining orders.

We will be closely monitoring your activities. Brabus Ventures Corporation continues to reserve any and all rights under the law, including the right to pursue any and legal remedies against you, your employer, your clients, and/or your web host. Should you have any questions or comments about the contents of this letter, please contact the undersigned.

Any resistance to our demands will be met with swift and decisive action.

We will be closely monitoring your activities.

ePerks fails to name the competitor that Vlad has a “proprietary interest” in and fails to make any connection between Vlad and any such competitor.

CEO, Ben Behrouzi later followed up with this email:

“I have no idea what you just did but clearly your mind shifts like the wind. I have now made my effort to work outside of the legal system and have no regrets with the suit that we will file shortly, which will stay in California for various reasons you’ll be made aware of by the way.

At this point any and all of your activities are being recorded by the watchful eyes of our legal team for use in assessing damages.

At this point I am ending your conversations on proposals, as this avenue and conversation are now over.” – CEO, Ben Behrouzi

Glass Houses. BrokerScience has uncovered evidence that suggests ePerks or their representatives have engaged in the exact behavior it accuses Go-Beyond-MLS.com of in the C & D letter above. In this post, all seeded or fake comments are easy to detect because they all originate from Brentwood. Among the fake pro ePerks comments are also comments denouncing Go-Beyond-MLS.com and an apparent ePerks competitor, PropertyMaps.com. There are multiple attacks on Go-Beyond-MLS.com and oddly these same attacks praise ePerks, CEO Ben Behrouzi, celebrate that ePerks has a board, and even give a short Behrouzi bio. In case you are not convinced, simply “just be running google searches” to learn more about Ben.

Disturbing. When Vlad confronted one of the persons leaving fake positive reviews in the comments section of a post Vlad wrote about ePerks on Go-Beyond-MLS.com, the following correspondence took place (we do not purport that this has any connection to Ben Behrouzi or ePerks in any way, shape or form, but this is relevant in the time line of events and as it relates to Vlad’s communications with ePerks regarding the matter):

From: Jaffar Sadighi sadighij@yahoo.com
To: Vlad Zablotskyy vladzablotskyy@gmail.com
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2008 2:48:08 PM
Hehe. Vlad, I want you to know I eat people like you for breakfast. You are simply pouring fuel. I will enjoy this one.
—– Original Message —-
From: Vlad Zablotskyy vladzablotskyy@gmail.com
To: Jaffar Sadighi sadighij@yahoo.com
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2008 2:48:08 PM
Subject: One word for you: BANNED

You are banned from leaving further comments on my blogs. Enjoy your life.

Shortly thereafter, the following was entered on Yahoo Answers using the the same name that was used in the correspondence above, “Jaffar S“:

This curious blog has popped up (update: blog taken down, link removed) as well promising to enlighten the world with information about Vlad Zablotskyy.

In this thread (update: Dennis has password protected link, so we’ve removed it), Dennis Pease shares his encounter with ePerk’s Compliance Director, Ramesh Birla (no longer with ePerks according to California DRE records) and provides more details in this thread at RealEstateWebmasters as well (note that this post starts as a fake post seeded by ePerks, but turns into a platform for users sharing their negative experience with the company, this is common):

Just so it is public record eperk.com (sic) Compliance Director Mr Ramesh Birla has called me 3 times tonight starting at 7:15 PM, first making threats that I will be taken care of in his words.

Net Effect. A google search for “ePerks” shows 4 of the top 10 posts are negative. The blogosphere buzz and interest is growing day by day with Vlad Zablotskyy playing the role of martyr.

Exit Strategy

Since ePerk’s traffic death spiral indicates that ePerks has stopped marketing and thrown in the towel, this may signal that it is on its way or already in the deadpool. The widespread fake comment seeding and ad spend for marketing as shown by traffic data both seem to dramatically decrease at the beginning of February. In all likelihood this is because Ben has left ePerks to die a slow death yet it appears that ePerks is still continuing operations and taking in revenue from members and new signups. Enter Ihype.com, Ben’s latest and soon to launch startup.

Ihype, a PayPerPost.com clone, launches on June 2, 2008. That’s right, hot off the heels of the ePerks debacle, Ben Behrouzi is gravitating towards one of the sleaziest models on the internet, paid post advertising, following in the footsteps of the infamous PayPerPost.com.

You Can Earn Over $10,000 Per Month Writing About Anything! – Ihype.com / Craigslist Ads

In True Spammer Behrouzi Fashion: In these comments for an unrelated article (a full 4 months before Ihype has even launched) “Britney” spams that “new website coming out called ihype.com i’m hearing a lot of cool stuff about it” . You can find more seeded comments (update: bad links removed), a paid post here, and a hilarious paid post here, where the paid poster confuses the Ihype.com with hype.com (an energy drink) and praises the energy drink site on accident.

The Moral of this Amoral Story

It is no secret that leadership starts at the top and shapes the moral and ethical fiber and culture of a company. The behaviors exhibited be ePerks paint the picture of a company that operates outside the bounds of any ethical or moral code. The upshot of this story is that it was supposed to be about brand destruction, but the truth is that the evidence suggests that Ben never intended to build a brand with ePerks or that he simply gave up.

While I despise payperpost.com, they have built out their company and infrastructure to support and grow their user base. I can say without hesitation, that in my opinion, Ben Behrouzi is in no way capable of doing the same with Ihype.com. At the time of this writing, days before launch, the Ihype.com 800 number goes directly to a voicemail that isn’t even set up. Ihype is simultaneously advertising that they have thousands of users while their paid post jobs board shows nothing but test jobs.

Ben has demonstrated his lack of leadership abilities with ePerks and has clearly shown where he stands in regards to ethics in business. By all appearances, he does not seem capable of building a brand nor growing a business on his own. ePerk’s failure to perform further validates speculation that his early success was more due to co-founder and uncle Payman Zamani then his own business acumen. Further confirmation is found in the recent threats against Go-Beyond-MLS.com and others as such actions are clearly not the actions of an intelligent and dynamic CEO, but those of an immature and inexperienced business person content on using brute force in lieu of tact and sound business strategies.

(ePerks CEO, Ben Behrouzi did not respond to requests for inclusion in this story.)

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